WALIA journal 34(1): 211-218, 2018 Available online at www.Waliaj.com ISSN 1026-3861 © 2018 WALIA 211 Linking strategic complexity to management decision making in SMEs: Mediation of organizational flexibility Syeda Rizwana Hussain Tirmizi 1, * , Muhammad Yasir 1 , Suleman Shah 2 1 Department of Management Sciences, Hazara University Mansehra, Pakistan 2 Department of Management Sciences, University of East London, United Kingdom Abstract: This paper aims to investigate the linkage among strategic complexity and management decision making in SMEs. Additionally, the mediating influence of organizational flexibility was also examined in the above hypothesized linkage. Data was collected through a survey instrument from 976 SMEs owners and managers. Data were analyzed through correlations and regressions analyses following Barron and Kenny’s (1986) procedure for establishing mediation. The findings show that strategic complexity and organizational flexibility have a significantly positive linkage with SMEs management decision making. However, the linkages of strategic complexities and management decision making become insignificant in the presence of organizational flexibilities, which affirmed that organizational flexibility has significant and immediate mediating effects in the relationships of strategic complexities and SMEs management decisions making in Pakistan. This study was underpinned to the complexity theory (Monroy, 2003), and have important theoretical and methodological contributions to SMEs research. Key words: Strategic complexity; Organizational flexibility; Management decision making; SMEs 1. Introduction * SMEs constitutes about more than 90 percent businesses all over the world. Furthermore, they provide more than 60 percent of employment (Raza and Majid, 2015). However, Zimmerer, Scarborough and Wilson (2005) reported that most of the businesses particularly SMEs are unsuccessful from the last few years. This demonstrates business failure is an immense issue of SME. Many investigations have proposed that business malfunction is expected to a great extent to a business’s inability to decisions making management. As Zimmerer, Scarborough and Wilson (2005) noted that without an obviously characterized system, a business has no practical reason for making and keeping up a focused periphery in the commercial center. This outlook is common in various exact studies that uncover a connection among decision making and businesses achievement (e.g. Schwenk, 1988; Gibson et al, 2002; Rue and Ibrahim, 1998). Management decision making is consequently an imperative research theme for organizational achievement. Research has demonstrated that the higher level malfunction rate of small enterprises, especially of new companies, may be ascribed to the absence of recognized businesses management decision making (Castrogiovanni, 1996). In spite of the important contributions by SME in the Pakistani financial * Corresponding Author. system, no research has been conducted on SMEs regarding decision making notion. Decision making referred to the activity or procedure of settling on essential decisions regarding organizations (Papadakis and Barwise, 2012), while management decision making refers to significant actions taken while considering firm resources and precedents sets (Mintzberg, Raisinghani and Theoret, 1976). Humans govern organizations and they are also responsible for organizational decisions, which in turn give actions of organizations. By review necessary literature of SMEs it is revealed that principal decisions makers of SMEs are their owners which also constitute the top level management of the organization in most cases (O' Dwyer, Gilmore and Carson, 2009). On an identical note, Boxer, Perren and Berry (2013) argued that top management team of SMEs with higher job related heterogeneity having higher capability of strategic thinking. When a manager take decisions at top level management in the organizations, sometimes it is considered effective for organization and sometimes it may be criticize. It means that complexities arise, and these complexities have influence on decision making of organizations. Complexities play an important role in the organizational decisions making. There are different roles which complexity dimensions plays in the stable environment of organization. As observed by Geraldi, Maylor and Williams (2011) the very idea of complexity is related to the internal elements of organizations. This type of complexity is made more